8.11.04

Whoa. Surprising and Good News Item of the Week

7.11.04

2006: The Year of the World Cup

I was already excited about the Real World Cup (Hint: the United States might win, but [almost] nobody will care. Myself, I'll be blind drunk in Berlin, being so obnoxious that I may get sold into slavery in Siberia).
But now comes a report that, earlier in 2006, there will be the inaugural Baseball World Cup. This is very exciting. I've been arguing for a long time that Major League Baseball ought to re-align into four leagues - American, National, Latin American and Asian.
How would this work?
First, do away with regular-season interleague play.
Next, devise a rotating schedule for the playoffs - the Latin American and Asian leagues would, to begin with, each be basically a half-league (eight teams per league), with two divisions.
In the playoffs there would be six opening-round series - the winners of each of the divisions (AL/NL plus four wildcards MINUS the two teams with the best regular-season records. They get byes (in BASEBALL?!?! Yup.).
This would be good.